Bonum Certa Men Certa

OSI President: Most or Half of the OSI's Money (Even Individual Donors' Money) Goes to a Microsoft-Led Initiative

Microsoft Initiative or Open Source Initiative? Can't be both.



Summary: The OSI has turned from advocate of "Open Source" (a disingenuous attempt to set aside Free/libre software) to advocate of Microsoft and GitHub in just 3 years (since taking Microsoft's money/bribes)

OUR regular readers may still recall that the OSI's sole member of staff left a couple of months ago, only months after one OSI co-founder quit in protest and another OSI co-founder was banned from the mailing list (for confronting a threat to the OSI's mission).



Basically, the General Manager quit without and before finding a successor and in his place they temporarily put a person who had raised money from Microsoft for two years in a row. Quite the accomplishment, eh? As we put it a few weeks ago, "The Open Source Initiative in 2020 is Purely Farcical". The money from Microsoft isn't a donation; there are strings (conditions) attached to it. No wonder the OSI's blog quickly became a Microsoft marketing tool.

"The money from Microsoft isn't a donation; there are strings (conditions) attached to it."According to the above video, the OSI receives about $20,000 a year from individual members, still about 5% of the whole (the rest is large corporations, as before), so it's effectively the same as when we last looked at it. The Open Source Initiative (OSI) is so upset that we point this out, based on their own IRS filings. All they can resort to is then ad hominem attack (which is what they did; I get attacked for stating facts).

Now, as per the above admission, it's even worse than we imagined. He says that twice the budget (or most of it) goes to ClearlyDefined. It gets about half the budget (no question about it, as he'd know as a former treasurer) and it's a very big deal. The ClearlyDefined people hide their identity and hide behind CloudFlare, but it's not hard to know who they really are.

ClearlyDefined was pushed by Jeff McAffer (Microsoft) and then by Microsoft inside the OSI's board (and blog) in 2018 and in 2019. In 2018 he wrote: "The team in Microsoft’s Open Source Programs Office has been contributing to this project and is a part of the community growing around the technology, curation, and upstream work. We are very excited to help develop ClearlyDefined along with many other organizations, companies, and individuals who are producing and/or consuming open source. Every day we are engaging with more and more open source teams. ClearlyDefined is crucial to understanding the nature of their code. We love the mindset and the project fits seamlessly into our engaged approach to open source."

"ClearlyDefined was pushed by Jeff McAffer (Microsoft) and then by Microsoft inside the OSI's board (and blog) in 2018 and in 2019."The OSI's press release says "ClearlyDefined community has already curated licensing data for 1,000 of the most popular projects on GitHub and in key package management ecosystems. [...] Jeff McAffer of the ClearlyDefined project team."

A Microsoft employee; we wrote about it many times before. We've always pointed out that ClearlyDefined is advocated almost solely and exclusively by Microsoft staff, people of the same group that phoned my employer in an effort to cause me trouble. They're thugs, albeit they try to disguise themselves as protectors of manners or whatever.

The above clip is a portion from around 25:30 - 29:00 of this new video. From the video's description: "Thank you to our Video Recordings Sponsor eng@salesforce!" (Also notice that this has only corporate sponsors, so OSI is basically an extension of corporations)

"Video Recordings Sponsor" (all capitalised) is Salesforce, which recently became notorious for laying off a lot of staff, but not the OSI's pawn (President).

"We've always pointed out that ClearlyDefined is advocated almost solely and exclusively by Microsoft staff, people of the same group that phoned my employer in an effort to cause me trouble."Well, that's his employer, with proprietary software to do this group chat/call. Readers must recall that this is the company whose head staff was pushing not only to oust Stallman but everyone who supported Stallman as well (collective assassination), in effect trying to kill the whole FSF. Not too long ago the Open Source Initiative (OSI) added more of Microsoft's people as well as money.

One final point: does that look like the Open Source Initiative's President uses Open Source on his desktop? Hard to tell from that video. Here's a screenshot that exposes a little of the top-left side.

Open Source Initiative President



Recent Techrights' Posts

UK Media Under Threat: Cannot Report on Data Breach, Cannot Report on Microsoft Staff Strangling Women
The story of super injunction (in the British media this week, years late)
Under the Guise of "MIT Technology Review Insights" the Site MIT Technology Review Posts Corporate Spam as 'Articles'
Some of the articles aren't even articles but 'hit pieces' against Free software and some are paid advertisements
Brett Wilson LLP Has Track Record in Scam Coin Cases (e.g. Craig Wright and More), Now It Works for 'Crypto' Scam Purveyors
But wait, it gets worse
Will Brett Wilson LLP Handle Its Own Winding Up Petition or be Struck Off for Overt Abuse of Process?
Today we sue not only the first Microsofter
Ubuntu Becomes Microsoft GitHub, Based on Decision Made by British Army Officer
You're hopeless, Canonical
Sharing Code and Recipes
It helps explain the triviality of software freedom
How Many Women Has Microsoft's Alex Balabhadra Graveley Already Strangled and Where Does That End?
If you too are a victim of this man and wish to share information, contact us
 
Greffiers and the US Attorney of the Serial Strangler From Microsoft
The lawsuit can help expose extensive corruption in the American court system as well
Credit Suisse collapse obfuscated Parreaux, Thiébaud & Partners scandal
Reprinted with permission from Daniel Pocock
The People Who Promoted systemd in Debian Also Promote Wayland
This is not politics
Victims of the Serial Strangler From Microsoft, Alex Balabhadra Graveley, Wanted to Sue Him But Lacked the Funds (He Attacked Their Finances)
Having spoken to victims of the Serial Strangler From Microsoft
Links 17/07/2025: Science, Hardware, and Censorship
Links for the day
Gemini Links 17/07/2025: Staying in the "Small Web" and Back on ICQ
Links for the day
Over at Tux Machines...
GNU/Linux news for the past day
IRC Proceedings: Wednesday, July 16, 2025
IRC logs for Wednesday, July 16, 2025
Exclusive: corruption in Tribunals, Greffiers, from protection rackets to cat whisperers
Reprinted with permission from Daniel Pocock
Links 16/07/2025: Chip Bans and Microsoft’s “Digital Escort” Program
Links for the day
Revolving Doors: One Day You're a Judge, the Next Day You're an Attorney Paying Public Officials and Working for Violent and Dangerous Microsoft Employees
how the US justice system works
Slopwatch: Noise, Plagiarism and Even Fear, Uncertainty, Doubt/Fear-mongering/Dramatisation
What are we meant to do to prevent a false association or misleading connotations? Game the LLMs? No. Boycott slopfarms.
Gemini Links 16/07/2025: BaseLibre Numerical System and Simple Web Browsing with TLS
Links for the day
Links 16/07/2025: Fascist Slop Takes "Intelligence" Clothing, New Criminal Case Against MElon
Links for the day
"We Might Save Somebody's Life"
I follow the example of my father
Why I am Suing the Serial Strangler From Microsoft, Alex Balabhadra Graveley, in the UK High Court This Week
Out of respect to the process and to the Court, I shall not share any pertinent details about the case
Links 16/07/2025: China’s Economy Grows Steadily, France Takes Action Regarding Harm to Children by GAFAM and Fentanylware (TikTok)
Links for the day
It is Not About Politics
Beware the people who try to make this about politics
Good Journalism Saves Lives
a shocking number of women die or get seriously hurt every day due to violence from a partner
Recognition of Women's Contributions to Free Software
Being passive is not an option when bad things are happening
Slopfarms Are Going to Perish Because Public Opinion is Changing
Many slopfarms will simply go offline
19 Years of Standing Up for Justice, Equality, and Truth
This week we shall take it up a notch
Gemini Links 16/07/2025: Tmux and OCC25 Working TLS
Links for the day
Over at Tux Machines...
GNU/Linux news for the past day
IRC Proceedings: Tuesday, July 15, 2025
IRC logs for Tuesday, July 15, 2025
Links 15/07/2025: LLM Pollution and Pushback in Ukraine
Links for the day
Gemini Links 15/07/2025: xkcd, New Cert, and Alhena Gemlog
Links for the day
Links 15/07/2025: Press Freedom at Risk and New Facebook Blunders
Links for the day
Reboots Should Never be Necessary
"BUT WHAT ABOUT SECURITY!!"
There's Still Hope for the World Wide Web
Let's hope that the trajectory of the Web won't be leading us to over-reliance on Google, nor will it reward worthless slopfarms
Gemini Links 15/07/2025: Smolweb and Alhena 5.1.7
Links for the day
The Danes Want GNU/Linux
David Heinemeier Hansson recently moved to GNU/Linux
Cory Doctorow Explains Why Software Freedom Matters, Whereas "Open Source" Misses the Point and Helps Monopolies
It's a very long article
BillPR (EpsteinGate-Bribed NPR) is Turning Into a Partial Slopfarm that Promotes Slop
"I went on a date with a chatbot!"
Two Weeks Passed Since Latest Large Wave of Microsoft Layoffs, More Expected Next Month
Blaming the debt on "AI" is just self-serving storytelling
Over at Tux Machines...
GNU/Linux news for the past day
IRC Proceedings: Monday, July 14, 2025
IRC logs for Monday, July 14, 2025
Gemini Links 15/07/2025: Gemini "Style Sheets" and Switching From Microsoft GitHub to Codeberg
Links for the day